Infectious fun, sex and violence in Benjamin Marra’s pulpy comic treats

Benjamin Marra produces comic tales of nocturnal, urban action, intense emotion and extreme violence featuring bikini-clad girls with gun-holder suspenders, testosterone-pumped guys and bloodthirsty beasts. His characters’ anatomy is idiosyncratic, and their angular movements a tad awkward, but there’s an infectious energy to Marra’s drawings that’s near impossible to resist.

Through his small publishing house, Traditional Comics, Marra’s brought trashy ‘80s pulp comics back with guns blazing. His drawing style is by turns intense, manic and delicate, he can pace and compose panels excellently and as his ten years old uncensored sketchbooks illustrate so wonderfully, he owns a wild imagination. His stories of notorious Gangsta Rap Posse and free world saving, political column writing and George Clooney dating heroine Maureen Dowd are funny and knowing without being too ironic. More than anything, though, Marra’s comics are just really, really fun.